Research

A lot of my past work/research involved the intersection of biology/neuroscience with EECS, with a focus on automation and control. More recently, I've focused more on just the instrumentation side. I also do a lot of teaching at the high school and college level and approach that as a research project as well (since the state of education is far from perfect) so do a lot of development/research into novel ways to improve student learning (particularly in STEM topics) for this age group.

Current Projects

Some of my current projects:

Low-Cost Automated Micromanpulator: Born out of my interactions with really expensive micromanipulators with often meh control software for neuroscience work in grad school, this is an attempt to make a several-hundred-dollar range (as opposed to several-thousand-dollar range) micromanipulator for applications in the life-sciences and expanding field of rapid-prototyping/3D-printing

Web-Friendly Lab Automation Platform: An open-source LabView-like instrumentation and control framework meant for use with common microcontrollers like Arduino, TI's Launchpad, the ESP32, etc. Built with Python and HTML/Javascript. Originally intended for 6.302 (see courses above/below)/for educational settings, but developing for lab/research settings as well. While it will never replace LabView (or MATLAB), I'm hoping that some of the design decisions made early on will enable it to live more effectively in Python-based/networked/distributed/IOT settings which I've had a reason to deploy several times now. This project is gradually coming together from some disconnected work, but several associated githubs about it are found here (relatives updated regularly): here, here, here, and original project here

Smart Breadboard: Current UROP project with Tuan Phan to develop inexpensive "smart-breadboard" which can analyze circuits built by students and provide meaningful feedback. Based on ideas by a few people from the past decade, but driven by issues encountered in running remote hardward-based lab coureses like MOSTEC EECS and 6.302.0x and 6.302.1x. Will post details soon....working on paper now (9/05/2017)

Javascript-based State-Space Environment: An ongoing project focused on developing a Javascript framework for controls simulation, based primarily on numeric.js

ESP32 Development: I really like this SOC by Espressif. I feel like they found something really special with the ESP8266, and made tons of improvements with this next iteration.

If you're interested in research projects along these lines, get in contact with me. I currently (mid-late-ish 2017) have a few other projects running at various stages that would serve as good UROPs and/or M.Eng Theses

Background

I grew up south of Pittsburgh and attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for my undergrad (EECS) from 2004 to 2008. I then moved to Cambridge, MA for my Masters and PhD in EECS from MIT, which I got in 2010 and 2014, respectively.